ABSTRACT
Rousseau and his early followers – especially perhaps his early French followers – were very much preoccupied with the problem of happiness. The Rousseauist seeks happiness and yet on his own showing, his mode of seeking it results, not in happiness but in wretchedness. One finds indeed figures in the nineteenth century, a Browning, for example, who see in life first of all an emotional adventure and then carry this adventure through to the end with an apparently unflagging gusto. When the romanticist on the other hand discovers that his ideal of happiness works out into actual unhappiness he does not blame his ideal. The contrast between classic and romantic poetry in this matter of melancholy is closely bound up with the larger contrast between imitation and spontaneity. The Rousseauist seeks happiness in emotional spontaneity and this spontaneity seems to be killed by the head which stands aloof and dissects and analyzes.
